BIG MACK ATTACK

Neva Chonin

Published
4:00 am PDT, Sunday, October 9, 2005

Maybe we'd all be better off rutting like cats. I'm serious. Oh yes, I am.

Let's traipse through history for a moment. Twenty years ago, America's only war was a cold one and Alan Alda -- himself the star of a nostalgic war in CBS' "MASH" -- epitomized the masculine ideal. He was sensitive, sincere and so in touch with his feminine side that he all but groped it. Women loved him without reserve. Men hated him. Thanks to Alda, courtship transformed from a hunter's terrain into a minefield of feelings and equality and pretending to appreciate postcoital snuggling.

No more! Now Alda plays a worldly Republican on "The West Wing," and the rituals of sex have returned to their pre-feminist state. Men should be pleased by this development, and maybe they are, but the new landscape also presents them with a formidable new set of challenges. You want submission? Then pay the bill, and don't forget to tip.

Here's a fun case in point. This week, Tariq "K-Flex" Nasheed, ex-hustler and self-proclaimed hip-hop dating guru, follows up his canonical tome "The Art of Mackin' " with another literary exploration into the dance between the sexes, titled "The Mack Within: The Holy Book of Game" (Riverhead/Freestyle). Yes, this is your inner child he's talking about, boys, and it's all grown up and hormonal, so listen up for your own good.

"Ask yourself!" trumpets Nasheed in the book's back-page blurb. "Are you tired of being Mr. Nice Guy and getting nowhere with females? Are you tired of settling for second- and third-rate females, wishing you could get with females who look like the ones in music videos? Are you tired of being manipulated sexually by females?" The answer is obviously "Yes!" to all of the above. (Note the stress on "females," lest some wayward male pick up the book looking for tips on how to get with his favorite gay bartender.)

Nasheed is on a mission, which he spells out in the book's first chapter. There are two kinds of men in the world, capeesh? Tricks are losers who give women what they want (usually money). Macks are winners who get what they want for themselves (usually sex and someone to do their laundry). Unless he's a masochist, no man should aspire to the former, and Nasheed has thoughtfully supplied a few guidelines for the latter. My favorite: "Never Trust a Woman Who Doesn't Perform Oral Sex on You." This signifies a lack of submission. Either that, or an overly sensitive gag reflex. Either way, run!

Being a mack isn't easy. It takes discipline, dedication, focus -- all those things one might apply toward a career, for instance, if one weren't too busy macking. Macking is work. Macking is an art, like everything else. Nasheed does it exceptionally well. In Rule Four, "Always Be a Mystery," he writes, "When you walk into a room, your mere presence should stir up excitement. ... Superman, Batman and Spider-Man all had women sweating them, because they hid their true identities." And it nearly drove 'em crazy, dude. Hasn't Nasheed seen "Spider-Man II"? Does this mean Peter Parker is a trick? Woe.

For those who care about such things, "The Mack Within" offers a depressing example of how far we've backslid into gender's dark ages. It's like, y'know, Simone de Beauvoir never happened! But for those of us who approach horror with a sense of humor, this is great stuff. Take the book's cover image, for instance. There's Nasheed, posing with what he has determined are Grade-A Females. One is wearing orange eyeshadow to match her halter top; the other has a visible makeup line, an equally visible face-lift, armpit stubble and bruises on her legs. Yeah, baby! Choice.

But enough with the hating. "The Mack Within" isn't the only pimp-tastic title out there. When you've finished Nasheed's catalog, you can dive into "The Pimp Game: Instructional Guide" by Mickey Royal, "The Pimp's Bible: The Sweet Science of Sin" by Alfred Bilbo Gholson or "The Complete A**hole's Guide to Handling Chicks" by Dan Indante.

To be fair, Nasheed is an equal-opportunity player, having also penned 2003's "Play or Be Played: What Every Female Should Know About Men, Dating and Relationships." He considers Oprah, Jada Pinkett Smith and Beyonce primo playettes. "Though women may not want to play games, the truth is men often do," reads the book's description. "So women who hope to win in the game of love must first learn the rules." Nasheed has a point. And really, the game never stopped, not even in the fashionably sensitive 1970s and '80s. It just remodeled the playing field.

I am fascinated by these books. They're like reality TV without the visuals, or a root canal without the anesthesia. Deal with it: Women are still valued for their youth and sexuality, and men for their prestige. Girls are still expected to land a man who has superior earning power, and boys daydream of women who double as sexual submissives and arm ornaments. To deny this is to hide in a progressive echo chamber -- and even in there, trust me, I've seen many a Sensitive Male checking out the teenage landscape over his aging wife's shoulder. Feh. Such is reality, and reality is both a bitch and a bastard.